Hi Caroline,
Indeed, I would characterise much of the activity as an "invasion"
from the Romanian Wiki -- most of the voters are long-standing members
of that Wiki, who call their language "Romanian", have lived most of
their lives in Romania, and some of whom do not believe there should
be a Moldovan Wikipedia at all.
However, all solutions which won in that vote, were also voted for by
the Moldovan or two who voted, including the change of the Interwiki
link name.
I personally don't have a problem with the interwiki title being
changed, but is refreshing to me to see somebody who is finally
actually interested in the "invasion" of mo.wiki.
Only one of the Romanians who voted, Ronline, has contributed more
than a token amount to articles on the Moldovan Wikipedia. All the
others have done is made a couple of edits to the article namespace
(without adding any content, just wikification or in one case,
correcting a date), most of their contributions are to talkpages where
they have constantly criticised the Moldovan Wikipedia.
Throughout this conflict, I have been called various names by these
people (excluding Ronline, who has been very polite) -- Stalinist, KGB
agent, fag, terrorist, idiot, communist...
While some of those aren't apparently insults or perjoratives in most
situations (fag, terrorist, and idiot being the exceptions), in this
particular situation, they most certainly are.
Some of the Romanians continue to try to characterise the Moldovan
Wikipedia as something that I want to work on alone, and that is
mostly my work. This is certainly not true -- there are currently at
least 3 contributors in Moldova, although only one of them is very
active now: Vertaler, Dmitriid, and Gabix. The majority of the current
content has been contributed by Gabix, or an anonymous user who I
think is the same person as him.
I think the current solution is fine, but I do think that what
happened there was pretty unfair -- should a group of en.wikipedians
be allowed to go and start criticising the Scots Wikipedia on its
talkpages, and then hold a vote a month later on whether or not it
should be deleted?
Admittedly, Romanian and Moldovan in their written forms are much much
closer than Scots and English (the main reason for a separate
Wikipedia is that in the Pridniestran Moldovan Republic, Cyrillic is
the official script for writing Moldovan, and in the Republic of
Moldova, it is still widely used by peasants in rural areas, and some
adults are more comfortable with it, especially the elderly), but I
think the situation is comparable for other reasons: most Moldovans
can read and write their language in Cyrillic, whether or not they do
it on a daily basis, yet perhaps only one or two of the Romanians who
"invaded" were any good at writing the language in Cyrillic.
I think the main problem is the fact that only one of these people
made more than the most minimal of contributions.
Mark
On 22/08/05, Caroline Ford <caroline(a)secretlondon.me.uk> wrote:
This looks like the debate on whether Moldovan is a
language or just
Romanian.
There have been edit wars on the English Wikipedia on this very point. I
think this needs careful investigation to make sure this wasn't an invasion
from the Romanian wiki.
Caroline/Secretlodnon
-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces(a)Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Wikipedia Romania
(Ronline)
Sent: 22 August 2005 09:55
To: wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Change of Interwiki name for Moldovan language
Hi, I would like to know how it's possible to change the name of the
interwiki link for the Moldovan language from the current
"молдовенясl
2;э"
to
"молдовенясl
2;э
(чириликэ)".
I talked to Node and he said I should contact a developer, so if there are
any developers reading this and you have some spare time, I would be very
thankful if you could change it in this way for mo.wiki.
The reason behind the change is because such a change was specified in the
Ronline proposal that was approved by the majority of Moldovan Wikipedia
users for the future of the wiki.
See:
http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ronline/Propunere#en:Proposal
The explanation is:
"Mo.wikipedia.org will be linked from other Wikipedias using the name
"молдовенясl
2;э
(чириликэ)".
This is to signify that the link is to a Moldovan
(Cyrillic) page and that Moldovan is usually written in Latin script."
It was basically a compromise after a huge round of negotiations over at the
Moldovan Wikipedia.
Thanks,
Ronline
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